This view shows a pagoda bridge located on the northwestern corner of Lake Kunming at the Summer Palace. Constructed during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor (1736-1795), it is small but elaborately designed. The bridge was destroyed by Anglo-French forces in 1760 and rebuilt during the reign of the Emperor Guangxu (1875-1908). It was taken by British photographer Thomas Child (1841-1898). The lower left corner is signed in black: T. Child, 1875. In white below: No. 14 Pagoda Bridge Summer Palace. It is from "Views of Peking and its Vicinity", a series of signed and dated full-plate images; of which 208 were numbered and captioned. Most were taken between 1875 and 1880, long before Peking (Beijing) had begun to modernize. The set was sold commercially and became an important visual reference for the old imperial capital. Child generally disregarded local life: he focused on presenting Beijing as a repository of traditional monumental architecture.
